Climate change in the news

A team of UC Berkeley physicists and statisticians that set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming is finding that its data-crunching effort is producing results nearly identical to those underlying the prevailing view.

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called “the legitimate concerns” of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated.

But Muller unexpectedly told a congressional hearing last week that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is “excellent…. We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.”

Climate change? Really? Happens all the time. Every day the temperature goes up and it goes down… just like the stock market. Of course the difference is that the stock market goes up and down based on people choosing to spend their money to buy or sell stock in businesses. Now of course climate change is not based on anything so practical as investment in businesses that produce products to meet demand. If climate change advocates want to run around spending their money to protect the climate, fine. They have every right to spend their money in whatever way they want to spend their money. They just don’t get to spend everyone else’s money to pay for a puppy so they can watch it chase its tail.

Earl, I’m not going to bother arguing over the climate-change science with you, it’s clearly pointless but please don’t equate climate and weather, they are very different things - it is entirely possible for the weather here in Britain and the weather on the Greek islands to be the same, but the climate is very different. You can argue over whether climate-change is man-made or not (I think you’re wrong, you clearly think I’m wrong) but let’s at least agree that the weather and the climate are different things.

It’s significant, Earl, that you respond, not with science, but with - economics! Because that’s what climate-change denial is really all about: the ecological catastrophe which is free-market global capitalism.

As to science, it is going to weather whether we want it to or not. It does not matter if that is driven by how many cows and hogs roam the pastures or how many coal fired power plants are built by China. As to economics, there is no free lunch. Those who cry loud and long that some great effort must be made to prevent an impending disaster (think Chicken Little) have little to say about who they think is going to pay for them to run around and change light bulbs. If they want to run around changing light bulbs that is their business. They need to bring their checkbook because they’re going to have to pay the cost of changing those light bulbs. They cannot expect the U.S. taxpayer to loan them their charge card. Happily U.S. taxpayers have, via the ballot box, let politicians know that the days of easy money are over.